Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Bill Burnett is the Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford. He has a BS and MS in product design and has designed numerous products throughout his career. In addition, Dave Evans currently works at the Design Program at Stanford. At a young age Dave worked at Apple where he helped design and market their first mouse. He then joined Electronic Arts as the first VP of Talent.
Above all, this is one of the best books that I have read recently. This is a very insightful. It’s easy to understand why the course taught by Bill and Dave is the most popular course on campus.
There is a simple humanity by having the authors open up about their childhood dreams. Above all, Dave’s dream to be the next Jacques Cousteau, reminds us of initial childhood views of what we wanted to do in life.
In addition, while you may think at first this is just for young kids — think again. Our new covid-19 pandemic has forced millions out of work. This impacts all ages from every walk of life. During this pandemic everyone can benefit from the lessons of designing your health, work, play and love. A quick hint to find job happiness, the trend is to search local job ads.
Bill and Dave strive for us to find holistic happiness in our lives and regarding employment learning how to find the right fit helps you focus better in finding work happiness during such uncertain times.
The focus for their design initially is to understand who you are, what you believe and what you are doing. Easy to see why this is so appealing to students. Bill and Dave brand a Lifeview Reflection. And to no surprise they have discovered many students major in studies defined by their parents – not themselves. They did not provide a percent but clearly the overall number of students who change majors in college start out guided by others’ demands of their future only to realize they are not living their life. This is illustrated in chapter three, Wayfinding.
Similarly, the focus of chapter four Getting Unstuck, will directly appeal to anyone impacted by the covid-19 recession. The one key from Designing Your Lives (chapter five) is taking a chance at resetting your life’s goals. A student was awarded three internships that he really wanted….but how do you accept more than one? Dave and Bill show the way to get the most out of life and show any prospective employer your true character.
In addition, the focus of chapter six Prototyping, was very inspiring. On the computer/software development side of life we may all have some understanding of prototyping. But Bill and Dave reveal how to actually prototype your life with a seasoned sales executive from IBM. For instance, by ‘prototyping’ you get to test out stuff you are interested in to discover if that goal will actually work out for you. This helps you begin new conversations and most importantly reveal anyone’s hidden biases and assumptions about a potential future path.
For example, their student Elise is the perfect example of why prototyping is such a critical element to understand your goals. As a former HR member of a large corporation she jumped into launching an Italian restaurant without ever working (prototyping) in any restaurant. In other words, Elise quickly discovered how launching a restaurant actually required hiring (repeatedly), inventory control, ordering and even the maintenance of a restaurant. Can only imaging how more frustrated she would be with all the important changes covid-19 has required.
So many lessons from the book to discover. “You never finish designing your life—life is a joyous and never-ending design project of building your way forward.”
Designing Your Life | Bill Burnett | TEDxStanford
Talks at Google | Dave Evans: “Designing Your Life”
TEDxSanFranciscoSalon | Designing the rest of your life | Dave Evans